This week, we stumbled across this amazing video of William S. Burroughs doling out some highly questionable advice to young people. As you might have noticed, we’re pretty big fans of collating advice from cultural icons here at Flavorwire — but the advice those cultural icons give isn’t always totally sound (or maybe it is, we don’t judge). After the jump, we’ve put together a collection of some of the craziest advice from famous people. Whether you listen or not is up to you.
William S. Burroughs’s Advice for Young People
“Beware of whores who say they don’t want money. In the long run, these are the most expensive whores what can be got.”
Mark Twain’s Advice to Little Girls
“You ought never to take your little brother’s ‘chewing-gum’ away from him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise of the first two dollars and a half you find floadint down the river on a grindstone. In the artless simplicity natural to this time of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction. In all ages of the world this eminently plausible fiction has lured the obtuse infant to financial ruin and disaster.”
See more here.
John Waters’s Advice in Role Models
“If someone is racist and really cute, could you still have sex with him? I have to admit the answer is yes. I have. You just change the subject or shout, ‘La la la la la la la,’ covering your ears when he speaks nonsense. If all else fails, stick something in his mouth to shut him up.”
“[F]or all the neurotics who may have felt a little blue one day and were unfairly diagnosed and overly medicated before they could even try to talk out their problems, I have some advice. It’s appropriate to be depressed sometimes. Who wants to be ‘even’ day after day? If you just killed three people in a DWI accident, you should feel bad. If your whole family molested you in a giant basket on Easter morning, you have a right to be grumpy every once in a while. But feeling down can make you feel up if you’re the creative type. The emotional damage may have already been done to you, but stop whining. Use your insanity to get ahead.”
Read more here.
Courtney Love on How to Lose Weight
COURTNEY: The thing you gotta do is – A! Stop counting calories! Okay? B! DO not get on a scale! ‘Cause lean muscle weighs more than fat. All right? I cut out FAT! That’s all you gotta do. FAT! No cheese. That’s it, Lisa. Period. NO CHEESE. I told this to KROQ, I told this to my nanny. People I tell this to lose ten, 30 pounds. STOP CHEESE. You know why the Orientals are not fat? ‘Cause they look on cheese as this gross, Western habit – it’s like sour milk LARD. They don’t want anything to fucking do with cheese. If you’re gonna eat cheese, take it out on a picnic, cut it up carefully, and really taste it – with wine or something. Don’t melt it on shit. And I lost 40 POUNDS by not eating cheese. And I even ate a little mayonnaise. All right. Skip the butter and skip the cheese and you will lose weight. I swear to God, Lisa. I was a fat girl my whole life. No one would fuck, and when they did they’d do things like fart in front of me. I told my friend that this guy farted in front of me, and you know what he said? Lisa: Nn-nn COURTNEY: He said, “Well, look at her; wouldn’t you fart in front of her?” Lisa: Oh! Here’s my second question – COURTNEY: Don’t eat cheese. There are a million things to eat that are not cheese.
Read the rest of the interview, from Lisa Crystal Carver’s ’90s zine Rollerderby, here.
Jack Kerouac’s Belief & Technique for Modern Prose
1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy 2. Submissive to everything, open, listening 3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house 4. Be in love with yr life 5. Something that you feel will find its own form 6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind 7. Blow as deep as you want to blow 8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind 9. The unspeakable visions of the individual 10. No time for poetry but exactly what is 11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest 12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you 13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition 14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog 16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye 17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself 18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea 19. Accept loss forever 20. Believe in the holy contour of life 21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind 22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better 23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning 24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge 25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it 26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form 27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness 28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better 29. You’re a Genius all the time 30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
Frank Zappa on Parenting
“Whenever Ronald Reagan is speaking on television, turn it on and turn the sound down, and put your child in front of the set and point at him and say, ‘If he asks you to get into a car, offers you candy or tells you to go fight in Nicaragua, tell him: No!'”
Benjamin Franklin on Choosing a Mistress
But if you will not take this Counsel, and persist in thinking a Commerce with the Sex inevitable, then I repeat my former Advice, that in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Paradox, and demand my Reasons. They are these: 1. Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stor’d with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreable. 2. Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do a 1000 Services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman. 3. Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience. 4. Because thro’ more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclin’d to excuse an old Woman who would kindly take care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health and Fortune among mercenary Prostitutes. 5. Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement. 6. Because the Sin is less. The debauching a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy. 7. Because the Compunction is less. The having made a young Girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Reflections; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy. 8.[thly and Lastly] They are so grateful!!
Read the rest here.
Snooki’s Pregnancy 101
“I plan on teaching my baby how to walk by standing him up and helping him walk.”